Cybersecurity Doesn’t Just Happen, You Have to Get a Round Tuit (We Have One For You)

It’s Monday. On the West Coast, Black Hat is over and if you traveled, you should be home.

If you didn’t travel, it’s still Monday and there are things to be done.

And August starts tomorrow – so you might be thinking, “Bah, let’s get through August and then I’ll refocus.”

Not so fast.

This is a round tuit.

Yes, it’s an old gag. But it’s also a natural human tendency.

“I’ll do that when I get around to it”.

“I’ll take that security course when I get around to it”.

“We’ll patch our systems when we get around to it”.

It’s been a bit crazy in the security world in recent times.

Let me get your attention with a few headlines:

At Mid-Year, U.S. Data Breaches Increase at Record Pace: from the Identity Theft Resource Center, they are reporting, “The number of U.S. data breaches tracked through June 30, 2017 hit a half-year record high of 791…a significant jump of 29 percent over 2016 figures during the same time period.” Read more.

Risk Based Security (RBS), a risk management company, published a new report showing in 2017 there have been 2,227 publicly disclosed data compromise events through June 30. Read more.

Hack on Italy’s largest bank affects 400,000 customers: The BBC reporting, “The first was thought to have occurred between September and October 2016, and the second happened some time over this month and June,” which hints at some of the importance of this story – getting hacked and finding out you got hacked are two different things. Read more.

Clearly the hype around recent breaches has put security at the forefront of everyone’s minds. I’ve spoken to many IT Security leaders over recent weeks who have commented that the recent events have given a much-needed focus back to security topics.

So now I’ve given you a “round tuit”, which, if you read the fine print is really permission to get moving on the things that matter most, and the attention of the business. It’s time to act.

And, by the way, this isn’t about buying a particular bit of tech, or a particular vendor’s solution. It’s about helping to get the budget you need to do your job properly. Take advantage of it and give your business the security it needs, that you’ve wanted to provide for a long time.

Fraser Kyne is our EMEA CTO and a rather nice chap to talk with. If you’ve wanted to get some advice about what you’re doing with your security strategy, he’s the man to talk with. Contact us and add a note about wanting to talk with Fraser, and we’ll set you up with a meeting. He will come with a slight Bromium bias, but that’s because he’s rather opinionated about stopping cyber crime.